The Silvercage

By Helena Kelleher Kahn

Any worker attempting to help an abused and neglected child must gain the victim’s trust – much easier said than done!

The drawing took shape, the thin almost angular face with its little nose, sad mouth, and alert eyes. As I worked on the hair, I could sense Stella’s footsteps, quiet though she tried to make them. A moment later, I was just quick enough to prevent her from snatching the book away from me and only just observant enough to catch the amazement on her face when she saw what I had made of her. I held my work out of her reach and was rewarded by the cry: “Let me see it! Ah, let me have it!”

I gave her the drawing. “I don’t want it torn up, Stella.” She carried it away with her into the bedroom and closed the door.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398466074

Helena Kelleher Kahn

Helena Kelleher Kahn comes from a middle class Irish background. She trained as a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital in London. Helena married Jacob Kahn, a biologist. When their three sons were old enough to make it possible, Helena trained at the London School of Economics as a social worker specialising in work with disabled children. Helena and Jacob retired to Ireland in 1994. Helena joined local writer’s groups. Her work has appeared in the magazines History Ireland and The Holly Bough of Cork, a celebrated Christmas annual.

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About the Author

Helena Kelleher Kahn comes from a middle class Irish background. She trained as a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital in London. Helena married Jacob Kahn, a biologist. When their three sons were old enough to make it possible, Helena trained at the London School of Economics as a social worker specialising in work with disabled children. Helena and Jacob retired to Ireland in 1994. Helena joined local writer’s groups. Her work has appeared in the magazines History Ireland and The Holly Bough of Cork, a celebrated Christmas annual.

Dedication

This story is dedicated to the people who try to help deprived and disabled children.

Copyright Information ©

Helena Kelleher Kahn 2022

The right of Helena Kelleher Kahn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398466067 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398466074 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my son John and daughter in law Teresa, for their assistance in this book reaching publication.

25 March 1974

When the child ran out in front of the car, I only saw her head and her arms, and oh God oh God I braked, I didn’t even think. So there was no real danger, just the shock to me of her being there at all. I was sitting shaking, but the little girl, she didn’t seem afraid, for she turned around to look at me and gave me a smile like a real welcome.

My official welcome had already taken place twenty minutes earlier when Lillian Saye rose from her flower-laden desk to greet me.

Mary Delancy. Good afternoon. Do sit down. Sit here. Now, was it hard to find us? Good. You see, I thought Dr Gomez really should meet you as well. Unfortunately, he’s late, doctors always are, as you know. You’ve been a nurse, and so you know. Charing Cross Hospital, wasn’t it?

No, I said, Baron’s Cross Hospital. And I don’t—

Tea or coffee? We have time, I think.

Tea, please. But I don’t remember—

Lillian silenced me—never difficult to do—by raising a hand while she spoke into the intercom and ordered tea. But I did remember something to do with that out-of-season big bunch of lily of the valley between her and myself. The scent was distracting, and for me, it brought too much of the past into the present.

You’re admiring my flowers. One of my team brings them in. I always think we need something to keep us, well, calm. Balanced. We give so much, do we not? We give so much to others. Thank you, Sylvia, just here. Wait—perhaps you’d better give Dr Gomez a ring. He’s probably forgotten.

Silvery fair curls lay on Lillian’s blue silk-clad shoulder, her eyes, blue also, narrowed under even pencilled brows. Talking all the time, she offered me the tea with Nice biscuits, but not one single crumb of her attention. I wanted to ask her why we were here at all, why she had sent for me.

My references were in order, and in my bag was the letter confirming that I was to start my first social work job next week, with Doctor Morgan’s paediatric team at Riverdale General Hospital. So who was this Dr Gomez? And what had gone wrong, for I knew something certainly must-have.

Perhaps it was only the scent of those flowers, debonair little white bells with their stiff leaves and invasive scent, they’re unlucky for me. This is nonsense, I told myself, that’s all over with now.

There was a rush of footsteps outside, and a man came in very quickly without knocking.

Ah, Dr Gomez, this is Mary Delancy—you don’t mind if we call you Mary, do you? Mary, Dr Paul Gomez from Sladebourne.

We shook hands, and I murmured something, but my mind was busy with the unfamiliar place name, for I couldn’t recall any Sladebourne Ward in the children’s unit. With some dexterity, Lillian extracted a stacking chair from a pile of these beside her desk, and now she handed it to the doctor, who sat down facing me, his warm brown eyes fixed on mine.

"Miss Delancy—Mary—I’m so delighted to meet my future helper in the field. You are interested in working with these parents, Mrs Saye tells me—I too am keen to work with them. We must start a group. Parent power! I believe that is the key to the whole thing.

We will certainly do better than that other chap, the nursing officer, who only had one reply to all the letters he sent out to parents. He really, let me say, got nowhere. I looked at Lillian, but she was concentrating on pouring tea for Gomez.

I’m afraid, I said, I don’t understand at all. I don’t know what Sladebourne is, or what it’s got to do with the Paediatric Unit.

Dr Gomez’s mouth opened, then closed again. Lillian put down the teapot. With a serious air, she addressed us both, her gaze avoiding mine and seeking, as it were, the middle distance.

"Well, actually, Mary, there’s been a slight change of plan. You did say at the interview that you wanted to work with children, and I thought at the time—only thought, mind you, for there wasn’t anything in writing, was there—that Celine would be leaving Paediatrics. Well. But now Celine’s withdrawn her notice.

We’re in the hands of bureaucrats since Social Services took us over! The trouble I’ve had with Richard Sawney. He’s our director now. Doctor, you wouldn’t know him. Mary, you won’t actually be here with the Paediatric Unit as we had thought. You will be a part of our Paediatric family, most definitely. But your base will be at Sladebourne House.

And that is? My mouth was so dry, I could hardly get the words out.

For children, Mary, children with mental handicaps. They’re all children—and of course, they’ll stay like that, like children all of their lives. They’re from, let me see, about four or five up to nineteen, or twenty, or thereabouts. The work you’d have would be with the parents of course. Dr Gomez came to me to ask for help with setting up a Parents Association for them, and I thought of you.

Here Gomez cut in so that I could not say much of what I wanted to, but at least I could now understand why Lillian had made sure to have him present for her revelation. She had correctly guessed that my feelings would not be very readily expressed before a stranger.

Gomez, recovering quickly from his surprise, began an appeal to my better nature: I promise you, Mary, you will have much interesting work, helping the families of those poor little ones to come to terms. Many of the parents feel broken and rejected, so I myself have already taken them on.

A shy smile of satisfaction appeared beneath the drooping moustache. "I did not always work in this discipline. Formerly, I had a good job with the Ministry of Supply at Porton, but I asked myself sometimes, what does that do for the soul, for the character, even?

So then I went back to school, to study for DPM, and now I’m at Sladebourne with Dr Nicholas Hanafin, our senior consultant. He himself may be said to have vast experience of many years working in this field. I cannot of course speak for him, but I know that I will welcome your help. The thing is, are you still prepared to come?

I could not be said to be prepared for anything. While they were speaking to me, my mind went very rapidly through several changes, which must have been reflected in my face. Surprise followed by disappointment and anger were the main emotions. The anger was directed about equally at Lillian and at myself because I felt shame at my own lack of caution.

It was not as if I had not been forewarned about Lillian and her ways, but still, I had allowed myself to be manipulated. Sladebourne was obviously unpopular. No existing staff member wanted to go there, so the choice was to send the new girl, recruited on a semi-informal basis (my practice tutor knew Lillian socially), and with no written contract yet in a time of changing masters. The looming reality was that I needed a job, and the positive side was that Paul Gomez, unlike most doctors I had met, actually seemed to want a social worker.

I’ll try it, I said slowly, but on condition.

The look of relief beginning on Lillian’s face creased back into a near frown.

On condition that I can change to some other social work post after one year, if I don’t like this job or if it doesn’t like me.

This is not usual, of course, ah—Mary. However, we can discuss it again. After all, you will be on probation for the first six months anyway.

This means I thought: ‘Give me any trouble, and I’ll fire you’.

Doctor Paul Gomez looked pleased as if he had got what he came for. What was that really, I wonder. Did he want a friend, a secretary, or a serf who would do all the running around and leave the credit to him? Probably he’d like a mixture of all three, but time alone could tell that.

Now, he was encouraging me to come to next Wednesday’s Case Conference. We have them every week—everyone is there! It sounds something of a social occasion. And then, as Gomez was about to leave us, he asked when I would come to see Sladebourne.

I will take her there today, announced Lillian, and we must go now, at once. You’ll have to follow me, Mary, I can’t give you a lift because I’m going straight on to another meeting after.

Five minutes later, we were speeding through the outer London suburbs. Lillian drove so fast that I could barely keep her yellow Mini in view, indeed I twice lost it and only caught up with it by good luck. We came to the outer reaches of the city, going south. There were more trees and fewer buildings, then there were distant woods spaced out with what I took to be common land; finally, there was a stretch of sandy open heath.

In the middle distance, a water tower in the surprising shape of an Italian Renaissance belfry arose from a cluster of trees. Around them, I saw a wall, waist-high, brick-based, and topped with six-foot ornate railings shining silver in the uncertain spring sun. We were at Sladebourne House.

As we drove through impressive gates, in tight convoy behind a builder’s lorry and the hospital group’s mail-van, I noticed some movement in the window of the gate lodge, movement like the withdrawal of a face, followed by the lifting of feet from a table-top. A sallow man in dungarees came slowly out to collect mail from the van, which had stopped abruptly and was holding the rest of the queue up.

Lillian waved to him, and he made a gesture which could have been acknowledgement, but his eyes were not on Lillian. They were on me, with an inquisitive and somewhat puzzled stare. Presently, the van moved enough to let us by.

A narrow drive curved before us now, with thick shrubbery on either side, then came to a crossroads where we turned left. A fair-sized house, mid-Victorian I thought, could be seen about two hundred yards ahead. A sign just before it pointed to Administration.

Bushes to my left parted abruptly, and a child sprang from them out in front of the car. I braked hard. As I was going fairly slowly, there was probably no danger to either of us, but there is always an if—. I sat stunned and shaking, feeling what could have happened.

The child, a blonde girl of nine or ten perhaps, stood still in the middle of the road and stared at me. Her eyes were puckered against the sun, her blonde hair was uncombed, the shapeless faded pink dress she wore almost reached her dirty plimsolls. As I started to get out of the car, she suddenly thrust one hand into her mouth and began to bite on it, making at the same time a high-pitched, whimpering sound.

A stout young woman emerged from the shrubbery, glanced doubtfully at me, then grabbed the child by the shoulders and marched her back into the bushes. The child looked at me over her shoulder then and smiled, a charming smile I involuntarily returned. As the shrubbery closed again behind the pair, I heard the sound of a slap on flesh, followed by a single sharp cry.

This encounter gave me something to think about, as I parked beside Lillian. I wondered where you had got to, she said. I told her, but she had not seen the girl in the pink dress.

We went through a pillared porch with an open door, into a long, ill-lit hall. There came no sound from the high doors on either side of us, and now for the first time, I saw Lillian hesitate. After a moment to consider, she went to the first door on the left and knocked. It opened for us so promptly, that I could not help feeling someone had been waiting just at the other side.

Leonard Locke, the Hospital Secretary, is one of those who make a handsome first impression. He is not very young, but at first, this is not noticeable, so straight and slight is he, and with such an easy, smiling air about him. The hospital administrators I have met up to now are harassed people who look as if they dealt perpetually with complaints.

Locke is not like that. Locke is elegant, leisured, relaxed, expensively suited and silver-haired. He shook my hand and introduced himself as if he liked meeting people, which is probably the case, and his eyes looked twinkling into mine when he expressed a particular delight at meeting me.

You’ll join our committee of course, he said. The Friends of Sladebourne. We raised three thousand last year for the Adventure Playground, and now we’re working for the therapeutic pool. Great fun.

I’m not really into fundraising, I replied.

"Oh, but you Lady Almoners, you’re too modest. You’re all marvellous at raising money, experts at it, I’d think—aren’t you, Mrs Saye?"

Lillian did not reply. One thing we evidently share is a desire to escape from the stereotype of Lady Almoner, a figure from the pre-NHS past, formerly an assessor of patients’ ability to pay towards their treatment costs. Means-testing, in the current moral code which Lillian and I both nominally hold, is now a grave sin. Good, I thought, at least that’s one thing I won’t be obliged to do here: fund-raise.

Have you seen…? Locke lifted a humorous eyebrow at each of us.

Not yet, said Lillian, if you mean Mr Paigle. We’re going there now. Unfortunately, we’re short of time today, Leonard. Mary will start here on Wednesday, so she’ll be coming to your next weekly meeting, your, your—

Our Case Conference, confirmed Locke. Look forward to seeing you there, Miss Delancy. You’ll find this a friendly place, everyone does. We all pull together. This sort of work calls out the best in people, in everybody working here. Yes, we’re a loyal team.

It did crazily occur to me to ask: loyal to what, or to whom? But I resisted the impulse, and to control it better stared for distraction at an engraving on the wall before me. Contemporary with the house, it showed a forlorn maiden comforted by the attentions of a spaniel.

That dog had something about it which reminded me of Locke. I looked at Lillian. She was explaining to Locke how to get to the venue for the next interdisciplinary meeting, which he is supposed to attend, having apparently missed the last two. When she had finished, we crossed the hall, and Lillian knocked on the opposite door.

Come in! Max Paigle, Chief Nursing Officer, rose slowly from his desk to meet us. A short, frowning, bald man, he accepted my introduction to him in the manner of a potentate receiving a new servant. He was distant, dignified, and disinclined for conversation. Wishing to lighten the atmosphere, and not being able to think of anything better to say, I made some foolish remark about the beauty of the room we were in, which was indeed very impressive.

From the spotless plasterwork of the ceiling to the red and blue Turkey rug on the polished floor, it looked like a genuine Victorian office adapted unobtrusively to the modern world. There were repro telephones for internal and external lines, modern radiators disguised by antique-seeming grilles, and that desk lamp was surely converted from a genuine art nouveau piece.

This much I took in, and it was not until later that the probable cost of it all occurred to me. But I had somehow found the right thing to say this time. Paigle actually smiled, seeming to grow inches taller as he did so. I’m sure he would have taken us both on a detailed tour of his den if Lillian had not been so obviously anxious to get away. As it was, when she had left us, he offered me a guided tour of the whole place.

20 March 1974

The territory covered by Sladebourne House is large—I do not know how large. It appears even bigger than it probably is because it’s planted so closely with trees and overgrown shrubs. There are no vistas here, no views, nothing to indicate where you are or to make any connection with life outside. Once past the entrance gate, which is apparently the only way in, the visitor enters an enclosed world, secret and apart.

Walking through his territory with Paigle yesterday afternoon was not entirely comfortable. He kept too close to me, I found, and once or twice I felt almost as if in the company of a dangerous large dog. The few people we met eyed us warily and showed no desire to stop and chat. When Paigle greeted anybody, it was with a sound resembling a growl.

From time to time, I would ask him something, and he worried it and turned it about, doglike, before giving his response. But for all that, I did at least get some idea of the history of the place, for Mr Paigle likes history, and he also likes to display what he knows.

Sladebourne began as an estate formed by the marriage of two Huguenot families. The bourne, or intermittent stream, flowed in winter only through the deep valley, or slade, crossing and dividing the estate. Both these features of the land still exist—somewhere. Somewhere also in the neglected woods are ruins of the original mansion.

The road from the entrance gates is the former carriage drive. The present administration building used to be a Manse, added in the 1850s when the estate’s owners were still rich, but Calvinist no longer. The family ran to daughters at the time, and when the one male heir died of fever in the Crimea, the title died out. This part of the estate was left to the War Office, and while the government of the time was making up its mind what to do with the unsought legacy, the mansion mysteriously burned down.

Eventually, the surviving Manse became a convalescent home for officers. Other buildings were added to house staff. Between wars, nothing very much happened here, and it was not until 1940 that the first children came.

A city institution had to evacuate seventy disabled children from London, and Sladebourne took them all. To these, over the next years, were added children from all over southern England. Antibiotics developed during the last war helped them to survive diseases that had ravaged institutions of the past.

So, according to Paigle, with life expectancy grown longer, there aren’t many vacancies now, and as fast as eighteen-year-olds are transferred to Mount Vervain, their places are filled again. Mount Vervain is the local institution for mentally handicapped adults.

Children come to us, concluded Paigle, when other places have given up on them. Runners. Kickers. Biters. Children with all sorts of violent behaviours. We don’t give them up. Young people unmanageable elsewhere are managed here. You could say it’s our special talent.

I said that must be very gratifying, and asked if it was difficult to find suitable staff. Paigle pursed his lips and puffed out his cheeks as if to blow away any hint of difficulty.

Our staff, I may say, are all exceptional people. Of course, you have to be a special sort of person to work here. D’you see, you have to be a little bit mentally handicapped yourself to do it. I mean, clever people wouldn’t do. People with those bits o’ paper, degrees and that, wouldn’t do. No, no, we want people here who are qualified in the University of Life. Who’s got real-life experience.

But you’ve some people working here who are, well, officially trained—nurses, for instance?

Oh yes, we have some, we have some. But what I’d call the real backbone of the place is the ordinary person. The ordinary person with what it takes.

It occurs to me that it would take a good deal of confidence for an ordinary person to challenge Paigle about anything, and in his eyes, this would be an excellent reason to employ as many untrained workers as possible. I begin to suspect also, that Paigle is himself without qualifications—in fact, he later told me so. He comes from rural Dorset, where he began his career as an attendant in the local mental hospital. I reckon he owes his advancement to other factors than formal qualifications.

As he was telling me all this, we reached a row of big red-brick villas with high gables, their white-painted trim giving them the spruced-up look of old-fashioned seaside boarding houses. The first house, I was told, was a staff hostel, the second a staff canteen. We did not go into either. I began quite consciously to prepare myself for what I might see in the children’s houses. As unobtrusively as possible, I took several deep breaths.

This is Waverley, announced my guide. He added, with some pride, that he had personally renamed the wards, changing A, B, C and D into names which he was sure I would recognise as having literary associations. Besides, Waverley, there’s Ivanhoe, Kenilworth and Midlothian—I had a fleeting fear of being expected to discuss Scott’s novels with Paigle. But I would like to know sometime, why those particular names.

We entered Waverley through a lean-to conservatory. Appropriately enough, this was full of plants and flowers, but as we passed toward the dim regions at the back I realised with a kind of shock that all the plants were artificial and all the flowers silk. Wafting scents came, not from living blossoms, but from incense dwindling in a clay holder, and from the fragrant melting wax of scores of votive lights.

All over the crowded walls and shelves were images from many faiths: pictures of Moslem, Sikh and Parsee sages beside the Sacred Heart and the mother of Dolours; a Hindu goddess between a gold-painted Buddha and a porcelain Kuan Yin. In what little space remained, perched dolls and small toy animals dressed as people. Untouched and somehow expectant they looked, these worshippers at a complex shrine!

Distracted by them, I was startled by a faint noise. A small dark-skinned woman appeared suddenly before us; she wore a long blue dress, and her head was covered by a white veil, beneath which her dark eyes shone with the reflections of candle flames.

Sister Daroga—Miss Delancy, social worker, said Paigle, introducing me.

Light coming through a swinging inner door dispelled any half-formed illusion—Sister was simply wearing the traditional uniform of a ward sister, and its archaic appearance was exaggerated by her tiny size. On her, the dress was ankle-length, the veil reached below her waist.

For one moment, I had had thoughts of an apparition of the Blessed Virgin and was relieved to know myself mistaken. Sister Daroga acknowledged me with a nod and a brief glance, a look not dismissive exactly, but one putting me ‘on hold’ for the time being because she wanted to turn her full attention to my escort.

Mr Paigle, what do you think I am? Answer me! Yesterday you take away my staff and today you send me more children, two respite children. Just look, look anywhere, where to put them? Answer me! I’m the hard one, the one who tells off, but the one who gets work done. No one dirty, hungry on my ward. But I do it—I have to do it—with no help from anyone.

She paused, not because she had finished, but because she needed to draw breath. Now, you’re bringing people in here when we’re changing the children, without asking. You don’t let me know ahead, even.

Paigle seemed unsurprised by this onslaught. He stood quietly under it, saying nothing, very slightly embarrassed and that only, I feel because I was a witness. Sister returned to the attack.

And you don’t answer me when I ring you up about those three girls, Caro, Lolly and Vera. That secretary, or whoever she is, always answers instead. She’s no good to me. I need to speak to you about them. Today. Now.

Paigle’s colour abruptly changed, the pink of his face deepening into an angry red. His pale eyes blazed, his sullen self-control abruptly deserted him, and his role as guide and host